Serie — Hannibal

He looked at the stag. The stag looked back. Then it turned and walked through the wall, leaving a faint trail of hoofprints filled with something dark and sweet-smelling, like amaretto and decay.

Will’s phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number: "The Uffizi has a Caravaggio. A beheading. Your favorite kind of chiaroscuro. Dinner at eight. I'm cooking." Hannibal Serie

It stood in the corner of the room, antlers scraping the frescoed ceiling. Its coat was the color of wet ash, and its eyes were the exact brown of a tailored three-piece suit. It didn't breathe. It never did. It was a collection of antlers and absence, a ghost wearing the shape of a beast he’d once tried to cage. He looked at the stag

Three years. Three years since he’d pushed them both from that cliff. The water had been cold—a baptism of rock and foam. He had felt the shatter of his own spine as a distant echo, like hearing a vase break in another room. He’d woken up in a hospital bed with Abigail’s ghost standing at the foot of it, shaking her head. Will’s phone buzzed